“Farseer,

On your beaked throne,

See me now,

Judge me a dog if I fail to feed your birds.”

-Nord’s Prayer

They had come at battle noon, had cleaved into the mud mob like an axe into moose scat.

The ravens had come.

They had cut down the last of the papas—the one that had shivered his shield and shattered his strong arm, last, choking on Est’s blade as the first vultures glided down from Nightland.

The death birds had come.

They had hauled off Reverent Chandler, ahead of what would come, leaving him alone to contest The Place Reverent.

It could not be given.

Nord had returned to the spot among those with whom he belonged. The death birds surged across the rest of the killing field that had been their people’s fresh womb. Until he fell, and fed them anew, the Farseer’s death birds would not feed on their last lost hope, their brain-dashed children.

He now stood among the heaped, sprawled, and twisted dead—cleaved into bloody ruin—their blood turning the green grass red where it could be glimpsed between the tangled piles of stiffening limbs. There was just enough space for his feet at the foot of the great oak, where the babies had had their brains dashed out. One of those had been his son, born by a woman of The Place Reverent after his last journey down the Mud River two winters past. The pile of quartered mothers—among them his one-time woman, though he dared not search—came to his hips, the heap of babies and toddling ones almost to his knees.

Est had ordered a march north, a march he, with his arm too shattered to remove from the shivered shield within which it was strapped, could not make.

This place could not be given.

He blinked his working eye, the other one a corpse of a window in its scarred socket, lost to the bear 18 winters past, blinked at the redly sinking sun, sinking into its night lair across the Mud River and far beyond, sinking beyond the Sarks, the stone teeth of the Iron Nords who had failed to come.

He opened his eye, feeling a kinship now with Farseer, sitting upon his beaked Nightland throne, gazing down upon their lost home.

He heard, in the distance, above the rustling torrent of tearing beaks, jostling wings, of gulping raven heads and axe-smiling vulture faces, the baying of hounds, the yelping of the dogs that came to this place that could not be given.

The dogs always preceded their hateful masters.

Among the Nords each boy must kill a kayot. Thus eligible for the wolf rite he must go out for the winter and shadow a wolf pack, learn their ways, and thereby come to understand the Nord’s canine shades.

Among the Muds there was nothing but the warped and twisted parodies of wolves they bred, like they midwifed the dumb meat beasts they ate. Thus the Muds were cunning but vile, not ranked as warriors among the Nords, but as something less—though no less deadly—something led rather than seeking, something possessed rather than aware.

He heard the simpering yip of the sniffer, the slathering snarl of the cruncher, the tongue lolling pants of the runners, the rumbling growls of the rippers—and something else, two bare mud-sucking Mud feet bringing up their rear, just beyond the shadowed line of the marshy wood that marched up from the Mud Lands along this, the morning side, of that river, that betrayer of the Nords, that Worm of Hel.

He had yet to see them, but they came, ravenous on the death trail, sensing, smelling or hearing that a Nord yet lived to be dragged down.

They surged onward just out of sight, under cover of falling night, to the place that could not be given.

A raven alighted on the lower branch that extended toward the river. He felt it eying him.

Knowing now that he was under the eye of their Nightland Father, he shouted, raising the volume and lowering the tone of his voice despite the singing pain this sent through his shattered arm and the deep ache that throbbed in his ruptured loins:

“Come to The Place Reverent!

“Come die under the Nord Tree!

“Come take The Place That May Not Be Given!”

Having heard enough, the raven cawed and took to wings black against the red charcoal of sunfall, and they came, in a howling, snarling, slathering riot, bounding across the deadfallen ground.